Israel welcomes chaos on its borders

MAJDAL al-SHAMS, Golan Heights — Israeli listening posts and concrete turrets sit dug into the peaks of Mount Hermon. The wind kicks up dust, mewling like an enormous cat, between the antennae and the crags. Here, in ancient Jewish folklore, is where God’s fallen angels first touched the earth.

Today, this is where the Israeli military watches over Syria. You do not need binoculars from Mount Hermon to see Damascus. What you see are scattered villages across a reddish, parched plain. But there is no more Syria here: every village is for itself; some are starving, or cut off, and all are armed.

What Israel sees from the Golan is Arab disintegration. Only four years after breathless TV commentators speaking from the tumult of Tahrir Square predicted a new era of Arab strength and unity, those that watch from Hermon see chaos.

What Israel sees from the Golan is not the neat — green, yellow, black — maps of Syrian command and control being re-tweeted on Twitter. They see a patchwork of tribal villages, run by the most violent and armed who live amongst them, pledging often-notional allegiance to the warlords who can protect them.

The villages loyal to the kingdom of Assad must more and more raise their own militias to defend themselves. The Druze villages are slipping out of Bashar al-Assad's kingdom and forming their own, as heavy weaponry withdraws to defend the capital city. Hysterical, as militias loyal to ISIS or the al-Nusra front close in, they have tried to block Assad's tanks from pulling out.

The listening posts catch their voices: exhaustion, terror, the constant threat of bandits, and the nights where the roads belong to no one. Many villages in desperation have started leaving the wounded at the foot of the mountain in the hope the Jews will come and heal them. After sunset, they do.

* * *

As they mingled amongst foreign dignitaries, party hacks, intelligence operatives, and Likudnik grandees at the annual Herzliya Conference last week, the most powerful men in Israel were optimistic about what their soldiers can now see from the Golan.

How different from the Arab bloc of their conscript days!

Taking turns to address the gathering, now central to Israel’s political calendar, a generation that fought Syria MiGs and tanks in the Yom Kippur war in 1973 reveled in the end of the old Middle Eastern order brought to life by the colonial Sykes-Picot agreement in 1916. Major-General Amos Gilad, the super-influential director of political-military affairs in the Defense Ministry, was blunt.

I would like to announce the death of Syria.

“I would like to announce the death of Syria,” said Gilad. “It is not a formal announcement as Assad still draws a salary. But he only rules a third of Syria.… It has no future. Assad is no longer relevant.”

What Israel officials see replacing the states of the Middle East created by the Sykes-Picot agreement that carved up the Ottomans' Arab possessions is their disintegration and eventual replacement by an ethnic patchwork where the Jewish state is surrounded by Shiite, Druze, Sunni, and Kurdish enclave-states and they are no longer the only vulnerable ethnic-outsider.

“Iraq no longer exists,” said Gilad, “Syria is being dismantled. But it is important for Israel to build its ties with those that survive.” Arab chaos has meant the elites were now incredibly unstable. “But in Egypt a miracle happened,” said Gilad, “Sisi came to power.”

With the forces of Hezbollah bogged down, fighting for Assad in the mountains of Syria (where the IDF thinks hundreds of their fighters have been killed), there was palpable “securo-crat” optimism about Israel’s weakened northern rocket-wielding foe. Palpable, because outside of dedicated sessions they were simply not mentioned, as former government advisers chatted with EU diplomats concerned about the mistreatment of the Palestinians as they sipped coffee under the palm trees outside.

“Lebanon is now a constitution without a country,” said Gilad, “A Hezbollah-stan was created there […] our security situation has not looked so good for quite some time. We have good deterrence on the Northern front.” This view was also shared by opposition MPs, fiercely critical of Israel’s current Netanyahu coalition, such as the war hero Omer Bar-Lev, who told POLITICO: “They just won’t attack us now.”

Worries, of course, remain. Hezbollah’s missile force has up-scaled dramatically, thanks to Iran. A war-game at the Herzliya Conference saw Israel pound the entire infrastructure of the Lebanese state, taking hundreds of casualties from rocket fire on Tel Aviv in the first days.

But Likud’s governing politicians remain encouraged. “Our strategic situation has never been better,” boasted Tzachi Hanegbi, the chairman of Israel’s foreign and defense committee and Likud’s chairman of the ruling coalition. “Eighty-five percent of our fatalities, they died before 1983.”

* * *

Israeli politicians do not have the best English, or for that matter the most elegant rhetoric. That is except Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. While his rivals still speak in fossilized slogans of the old Zionist movement, peppered with quotes from the enduring 1950s leader cult of David Ben-Gurion, “Bibi,” as he is universally known, speaks American.

If you’re not at the [negotiating] table in this region (...) you’re on the menu.

“If you’re not at the [negotiating] table in this region,” Netanyahu boomed in his Herzliya address, “you’re on the menu.”

Mimicking, it seemed, the Sputnik rhetoric John F. Kennedy and used to rally America against the Soviet Union, Netanyahu warned the gathering of “Iran’s scientists” and “Iran’s engineers” and “Iran’s forward positions around the world.” But, to his packed audience, Bibi spoke more broadly of Israel’s new “opportunities.”

“All around us states are collapsing,” said Netanyahu, “Syria. Libya. Yemen. Actually they don't exist anymore as we used to know them.”

“I speak with quite a few of our neighbors ... more than you'd think.”

Never specifically naming the Saudi kingdom, Netanyahu, boasted over, and over, at Herzliya that the Syrian meltdown, American weakness and Iran’s “paws” around the Middle East are opening the doors to Riyadh for Israel.

“I want to say something about bridge building,” said Netanyahu. “It's not strengthened by grand announcements. It can be undermined.”

A member of the Druze community from the Golan Heights watches smoke rise near the Druze village of Hadar on the Syrian side of the border with Israel, during a fight with Syrian Nusra Front (JAN) fighters, 16 June 2015. EPA/ATEF SAFADI

One power play has transfixed Netanyahu’s circle: the idea that in exchange for throwing his diplomatic heft into the battle to stop a nuclear Iran, Saudi Arabia can pressure the Palestinians into dramatic concessions.

“Bridge-building,” he said, “can be built if our Arab neighbors pressure the Palestinians back to the negotiating table for a responsible deal.”

Israel’s price is clear: Saudi pressure on Ramallah. Netanyahu made no secret of what Israel's part of the bargain — keep telling Washington that it's nuclear deal with Iran is insufficient.

“I've received some requests from Arab quarters,” said Netanyahu. "'You go out there, you tell them.' I do go out there. I do tell them [the Americans].”

Saudi Arabia asking for help thrills the men who run Israel. It is a historical victory: not only gone is the USSR-backed Syrian army that nearly trampled the IDF in the Yom Kippur War, so is Saudi Arabia, the economic-existential threat, that imposed an OPEC oil-embargo on the USA to punish it for helping Israel win that war.

“We must form alliances near and far,” said Netanyahu, “Far and near. And look at the world as it really is and see what you can build. We must build alliances.”

Even the fiercest critics of Netanyahu’s immobility on the Palestinian issue, like former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, agree with him. “The events of the last year of the Arab dismantling give us very strong interests with Saudi Arabia.… We must remember vis-à-vis the Palestinians Israel can give, and from the moderates [such as Saudi Arabia] it can receive,” said Barak, in a thundering speech.

We are living the clash of civilizations that Huntington foresaw. And the clash of giants of Islam.

“We are at historic crossroad,” warned the former prime minister, the joint-most highly decorated soldier in Israel’s history, “We are living the clash of civilizations that Huntington foresaw. And the clash of giants of Islam.”

But there was no talk about attacking Iran, at Herzliya. “The Iran agreement is better than war,” said former President Shimon Peres, enabler of Israel’s atom bomb at Herzliya, in his oration. “What is the alternative to the Iran agreement? A military solution? Oh come on.”

* * *

Between the concrete blocks of the lookout in Mount Hermon, you can see whiffs of smoke rise from the Syrian plain, and the tantalizing prospects for Israel.

This arid immensity may even become Israel’s enormous non-Muslim buffer zone. Covertly, Druze militia are now appealing to the men who gathered at Herzliya for help: with arms, supplies, and back channels to Washington.

“We will take measures to prevent a situation where refugees are massacred,” said Lieutenant General Gadi Eisenkot to the Israeli parliament’s foreign and defense committee Tuesday, as reports surfaced in the Israeli media the sector ringing Mount Hermon was being sealed. Israel has since confirmed that it closed the sector.

There have been massacres of Druze at the hands of the al-Nusra Front — whose black flag is now advancing on the Druze villagers of al-Khader below the slopes of Hermon. The 700,000 Druze in Syria know the fate of the Yazidis to the north. This is why the 130,000 Druze in Israel are now raising money for the co-religionists and have met with Netanyahu to beg him to save their kin from “a Druze Holocaust.”

Israeli Druze from the village of Yarka, near Haifa, Israel, during a demonstration in support of their Syrian Druze brothers in Yarka, Israel, 14 June 2105. The Druze community is calling for international support of the Syrian Druze minority after dozens were massacred by Islamic extremists in northern Syria. EPA/ATEF SAFADI

Israel is now mulling creating a “Druze safe zone,” as their leaders openly renounce Assad’s conscription. This is not merely altruism: saving villages like al-Khader would strengthen Israel’s claim on the Golan. There are few Sunni Arabs here, and the population is roughly balanced between Jewish settlers and Druze villagers.

The massacres of “infidels” in Syria, means there are signs the Druze living there, who unlike Druze in the Galilee (who serve in the IDF), have pledged allegiance to Damascus since the area was seized in 1967, are now changing their minds. They have begun taking Israeli citizenship (at present over 10 percent and rising fast now do). The war may yet change their loyalties irrevocably, allowing Israel to win any future referendum on the Golan’s status — and strengthen the case that the Golan Heights should not be considered occupied territory.

It is not lost on the establishment — the bald men, the former Mossad chiefs, the brigadier-generals, and the burly spooks — that what was once considered a flight of fancy of 1948 war-hero Yigal Allon, that Israel needed to see the birth of Druze and Kurdish states to break the Arab hegemony in the Levant, is fast becoming a reality.

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Mike Ehling

Since when is Israel — the only nuclear power in the Middle East — a “vulnerable outsider”?

Posted on 6/17/15 | 7:09 AM CET

Score Bear

Drivel posing as commentary. What is the point of snarky asides such as 50 years ago in developing israel’s nuclear capability, or impugning the English of Israel’s leaders?

Posted on 6/17/15 | 10:24 AM CET

jesuisjeanmarie

Well, who can blame Israel? Muslims have gone mad, killing each other… so the only thing you can do it is sit and wait.

Posted on 6/17/15 | 12:30 PM CET

trisul

“I’ve received some requests from Arab quarters,” said Netanyahu. “‘You go out there, you tell them.’ I do go out there. I do tell them [the Americans].”

And how long will the US continue to accept being Israel’s poodle, the short change between a strategic relationship between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Won’t the Americans wake up one day and decide to reclaim their country. Where will that leave Israel, does Bibi think of that?

Posted on 6/17/15 | 1:56 PM CET

fcallen

Most of the “Jewish settlers” on the Golan are natives of that place. It has been in Israeli hands now for almost 50 years!

Posted on 6/17/15 | 3:03 PM CET

Frank Adam

It is just because the Arab parties saw Israel as an outsider that they attack her repeatedly; and they took their chance because they saw Israel as vulnerable to Arab numbers and past military valour that created the Arab World imperialistically. In this they fell foul of their own bigotries about Jews whom they had confined to mellahs of yesteryear and stoned as disarmed civilians, even as Balfour and Co fell foul of superstitions about Jewish wealth and power. When all this is over with the petro – age in twenty or at most thirty years, the Moslem World might actually think itself through; revive the desert agriculture of the classical World; and provide its people with health and education to put bread on the table instead of jihadi massacres in the name of theological speculation.

Posted on 6/17/15 | 3:33 PM CET

Mitzymoon

Just sit back and let Arab Muslims slaughter each other. Sounds good to me.

Posted on 6/17/15 | 6:08 PM CET

sharonsj

What do you mean by Jews are ethnic outsiders? Jews have lived in the Middle East for thousands of years. Are you one of those nuts who thinks Jews aren’t Jews, that they are Khazars? The Khazars were a group in the Caucasus Mountains who converted to Judaism 1500 years ago. Anti-Semites like to claim that all Jews really are ethnic Khazars and not true Hebrews. Meanwhile, DNA proved that all Jews originated from the Middle East. And the only advantage chaos produces is that Muslims are busy killing each other rather than continually trying to kill Jews.

Posted on 6/17/15 | 6:09 PM CET

cp1818

“But in Egypt a miracle happened,” said Gilad, “Sisi came to power.”

It’s a miracle that a military dictator came to power. What a democratic thinking. Israel is the scourge of civilization.

Posted on 6/18/15 | 12:57 AM CET

Lestibournes

While there are a few irritating things in the article (like insisting on calling Jews born and raised in a part of the historical Jewish homeland “settlers”), that is nothing compare the comments display shockingly open antisemitism.

And yes, Sisi coming to power in Egypt is a good thing, otherwise Egypt would either have fallen to chaos or would gradually turn into a pro-jihadi theocracy, like what is happening under Erdogan in Turkey. It’s a good thing that Mursi miscalculated when he put Sis in charge of the military, or he might have succeeded more quickly and fully than Erdogan, who is now experiencing a setback.

Sisi’s rise to power saved Egypt, and may yet help save the region as well. Of course that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look out for any new surprises, or that he can’t end up going bad after all.

Posted on 6/18/15 | 1:58 AM CET

Jack

Of course Israel loves war! Anything to advance the agenda of the Israeli military complex so it can continue destroying the lives of millions, while the US helps. Disgusting.

Mitzymoon

Oren Kessler

It’s just Majdal Shams, not Majdal al-Shams. And this headline is hugely misleading.

Posted on 6/18/15 | 5:11 PM CET

hippie1367

Israeli trash profiting off weapons and genocide while stealing from US taxpayers- its how they keep their concentration camps running.

Posted on 6/19/15 | 12:43 PM CET

Comment ToMyself

What Ben Judah failed to realize is that the Jews are not outsiders in the Middle East but native to it. They are the indigenous people of Israel, expelled to a European diaspora in which they truly were outsiders by foreign colonialist powers.

Given that his starting point is a bedrock of misunderstanding, it’s little wonder the analysis he attempts to construct upon it is so tortured and confused.

Posted on 6/19/15 | 1:35 PM CET

GWK

I think the point of the article is that the creation of separate Druze and Kurdish states are now closer than ever since 1948. It may be true, but still a far goal fraught with many hurdles before becoming reality.

While the Kurds have greater numbers and wealth than the Druze, the regional powers (Turkey, iran, and iraq) still remain opposed to the establishment of a Kurdish nation state. The 500,000 Druze, if they survive the violence around them, may be too smatt in numbers to ever become an independent state no matter what Israel does. But the article suggests Israel could help establish an Israi-allied Druze buffer zone in and around the Golan Hts. Would, could Israel truly protect the Druze in that zone if it were created?